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#michelemouton

The ever impartial and balanced ABC posted an article talking about how it is time to eradicate sex segregation in sports by using formulas/classification systems to ‘even it out’. Were these social experiements warranted, how was it that Michele Mouton finished runner up in the 1982 World Rally Championship against an all male field with zero free kicks? She won four races in the season. Call it raw talent. She didn’t require complex formulas and spreadsheets to give her a handicap. She won on her own merits. No system required. Isn’t that the thrill of competition?

In the Moto 3 motorcycle championship, Maria Herrera competes against an all male field. She is not a championship contender but she isn’t always last. Still she has no handicap. If she wants to race with the men then accept all the same rules of competition. You won’t find Maria moaning about being hard done by.

Ana Carrasco, a 20-year-old from Spain, became the first woman to win a world championship motorcycle race last year. No sex segregation but grit, hunger and determination. No handicaps.

Still, the driving factor (no pun intended) behind these three women has been the machines which level the playing field but the importance was they won on their own skill.

Sadly, it is an inescapable fact that men and women are different physiologically. Especially in sports which rely solely on the physicality of the athlete. Should Merlene Ottey have been pitted against Usain Bolt in the 100m? Give her a size, weight and twitch fibre handicap? However shouldn’t whites or Asians be equally justified to complain that black athletes tend to dominate track and field. Perhaps they should be given race based handicaps? Perhaps a flyweight female boxer be given a 20 point start against a flyweight male boxer? Whatever it takes. So much for betting agencies setting fair prices (although what a way to match fix by a subtle tweak to a handicap formula).

Then we switch into the transgender athletes e.g. males who identify as females. So let’s say a former 125kg All Black wants to play for a women’s rugby team. Apart from the health and safety aspects of such a move, there is no logic or fairness. Or perhaps to avoid health risks give Serena Williams a two set head start against Roger Federer? Make him play with a racket head half the size.

Since the first Olympics in Athens in 1896 the world has had over 100 years of sex segregated sports. No one has really complained. Drug cheating is a bigger issue to be fair. Having said that people want to see athletes break records unhindered by spreadsheet based technicalities. Usain Bolt trained for 16 years to remain at the top of his game. Would FloJo be satisfied to say she ran an adjusted 9.57s to be the world’s fastest sprinter when she only managed 10.49 in real money? Or is it worth setting her starting blocks to run 92m so as to even it out. Talk about hollow victories.

Seriously though, what is wrong with athletes training their hearts out to win glory? What is it with the left that insists on trying to even out absolutely everything. Why not allow women hammer throwers to do the men’s 100m? Surely they can derive a formula for that? Or perhaps the Jamaican 4x100m men’s relay team should complete against the Japanese women’s group synchronized swimming in their respective sports? Why not give the weight of a Djibouti gold medal 10x that of the US or China?

This thirst for loony social experiments is really going too far. The outward push for diversity continues unabated. Yet once again the hypocrisy of the left calls for ‘differences’ to be eradicated so everyone can be a winner. Equality without a level playing field. Now that is straight out of the socialist playbook.